JCUA Board Member Ben Halbig gave this drash at Mishkan’s Yom Kippur morning services for the Isaiah Haftarah . As we move into this new year, Ben asks how can we do more? How can we make this year reflect “the fast God really wants?”

“Good morning. I’m Ben. I grew up on the East Coast, but Chicago has been my adopted home for the better part of the past decade – first as an undergrad in Hyde Park, and now as a practicing lawyer living in the Gold Coast. Mishkan has been my spiritual home in Chicago since I moved back after law school. As a Chicagoan and a Mishkanite, I am honored to be sharing a few thoughts on what we are about to read together.

This has been a rough year for Chicago.

Almost a year ago – just before Thanksgiving– a judge ordered the city to release a video showing a CPD officer emptying his 9 millimeter semi-automatic rifle into an unarmed high school student. The video of Laquan McDonald’s murder tore at the heart of the city.

I remember live-streaming the protests on Black Friday 2015 in my parents’ house in Maryland. You know what has stuck with me all these months? Not the thousands of young activists pleading for justice on Michigan Avenue but Channel 5’s interviews with angry shoppers whose plans for holiday bargains had been ruined by the march. “Why today?” “Why here?” “Why can’t they just protest in their own neighborhood?”

I wish I could stand here and tell you how I am not them, how I would have been with the protesters. But the truth is – I know in my heart of hearts, I am a shopper. I am an employed white man living on the North Side of Chicago. When I think and talk about violence in in our city, it’s something that happens to other people. I don’t know anyone who has been shot this year. I don’t fear for my life when stopped by police.

Isaiah’s words in the passage we read today can be disheartening in the middle of the day on Yom Kippur. He’s essentially telling us that, after about 18 hours of fasting, praying, and asking to be inscribed in the Book of Life, we are doing it wrong. This is not the fast God wants.

You’d think after all these years of reading Isaiah’s words, we might get it right. But his message seems to be really hard for us to hear. What makes it so hard to hear? Read the rest of this entry »

As part of closing out my year as a community organizer at the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, Marla Bramble, the Director of Organizing at JCUA and my supervisor, asked me to reflect on what I expected this year to be like beforehand, and what it has been in reality. This piece of reflection has been challenging for me because I really had no idea what to expect coming into this year. For any of it. What would my housemates be like, what would my job be like, what would Chicago be like? What even is community organizing?

After 11 months of work, programming, and bayit reflection sessions, I can’t say I’ve totally figured out community organizing. But I definitely have a better sense of what it is and what its place is in the Jewish community in Chicago and in my own life.

Organizing this year has looked like many different things for me: I marched for a just budget during Moral Mondays downtown, I occupied the capitol in Springfield while singing “We Shall Overcome,” I shouted “Si se puede” alongside domestic workers after a long day of lobbying. I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many individuals and organizations who are working to combat our city’s problems and challenges through intentional, grassroots, systems-based organizing and action.

But at the beginning of the year there was often this lingering doubt in the back of my mind. I heard speeches and stories from young, black, queer organizers from Chicago who are leading the charge for comprehensive trauma care, police accountability, and an end to the ever-rising death toll in our city. I saw the news stories about the fierce parents of the Dyett hunger strike, who were my first real exposure to people putting their bodies on the line fighting for justice. And at times I felt like organizing Chicago’s Jewish community was a cop out. As we know, a majority, though certainly not all, of Chicago’s Jewish community lives life with a certain amount of comfort and relative socioeconomic ease. On the most surface level, these battles and others don’t appear to be many of our battles. Why organize the Jewish community at all? Or to put it in Community Organizing terms, what is my self-interest in focusing my work on galvanizing my fellow Jews?

But after a bit more time, what many of my coworkers and members had been saying to me all year finally sank in: These are my people I’m organizing! There is no race, region, activity, hobby, political affiliation, etc. that I identify with more strongly than I identify with the Jewish community/Judaism. And 1:1 after 1:1 this year (side note: 1:1s are intentional conversations, they are an organizer’s bread and butter, and they are probably the most defining component of my year), I spoke with members of the Chicago Jewish community who told me that their Judaism is also inextricably linked with a personal pursuit of justice in some meaningful way. I’m sure many of you here tonight would say the same thing. I hear the Jewish call for justice being echoed in individual after individual in our city, and I want to help fan these flames. I want to be a part of a community that heeds the imperative for action that is now central to my Jewish identity.

This identity has been shaped enormously by these 1:1 conversations, as well as the countless conversations I had with my housemates this year. My roommate, Sarah, and I often stay up late talking about fears and hopes surrounding our new Jewish community and our personal Jewish identities. Some of my favorite AVODAH programs this year have pushed my housemates and me to think critically about what we want our Jewish community to look like and how we can, and should, be a part of making that change happen.

Through AVODAH and JCUA, I’ve realized that, if the Jewish community is going to continue to be my community, then I have a responsibility to hold us accountable to our values and to ensure that we act powerfully in the world in pursuit of justice. That’s my self-interest, and that’s why JCUA’s work is essential. I view it as a great privilege that I was able to organize my own community this year and to feel deeply connected to our victories and fears. I am excited to continue to be a JCUA member and to build my own power as well as the power of a Jewish community pushing for transformative social change in Chicago. And while I am sad indeed that my year in the bayit is coming to a close, I am bolstered by the knowledge that I now have a houseful of people who will not shy away from holding meaccountable to my values – our shared values – and who will push me to always organize and show up with my Jewish pride at the forefront of my identity.

On July 10th, I was thrilled to attend Jewish Council on Urban Affairs’ first daylong community organizing training for members. On a clement summer Sunday, 30 JCUA members spent eight hours learning the nuts and bolts of organizing, connecting with each other, and discussing what a Jewish voice in social justice organizing sounds like. The strength of member interest in this training says a great deal about the appeal of JCUA’s contributions to the University of Chicago trauma center campaign and the Domestic Worker’s Bill of Rights campaign to members of the Jewish community. It says that members of Jewish communities throughout Chicago are connecting with JCUA’s vision and are hungry for opportunities to work for social change by organizing Jewishly. For most members in attendance, this was the first formal organizing training. As a full time tenant organizer, I have gone through Organizing 101 types of trainings in the past but I had never trained in community organizing with an emphasis on Jewish values, or what JCUA calls “organizing Jewishly.”

The training was led by JCUA’s Director of Organizing, Marla Bramble, Jim Field, Director of Organizing with Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, and Aryeh Bernstein, a JCUA member and consultant. JCUA members learned about building and leveraging people power, and equalizing power relations to change the minds of decision makers. This included practical skills, including the basics of organizing an accountability session with an elected official or other decision maker, and the effective framing of an organizing campaign. Members also tried their hands at the all-important 1-on-1: the bread and butter of community organizing. In a 1-on-1, the organizer builds a relationship with a community member through… Read the rest of this entry »

On May 19th, JCUA and the Trauma Care Coalition demonstrated tangible power in a packed town hall meeting in North Kenwood. The meeting focused on influencing the University of Chicago in implementing its Level-I Adult Trauma Center with transparency and accountability to the South Side community. The many passionate and informed voices in the room sent a clear message to the University of Chicago administrators present that the campaign is not over, that the community expects a voice in the structuring of the trauma center, and that it will act to ensure that voice is heeded.

Background about the Trauma Center Campaign

For the past year and a half, JCUA has been a full partner in the campaign to bring a Level-I Adult Trauma Center to the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC). For the past thirty years, there have been no Level- I Adult Trauma Centers on the South Side, and gunshot victims in the area have had no local options for emergency care. Since 2010, this campaign has been led by grassroots South Side organizations representing those most impacted by gun violence. Learn more about the campaign and the coalition members here.

Why this Town Hall Just Now

The Trauma Care Coalition has secured two significant victories in this past year. In December, The University of Chicago announced that after years of refusal, it will, indeed, build a Level-I Adult Trauma Center. In May, the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board unanimously approved the University of Chicago’s application for a trauma center. On the heels of these victories, the coalition called this Town Hall to make sure that the trauma center will be developed with community members at the table and with a comprehensive approach to trauma care.

What Happened at the Town Hall

The Town Hall was introduced by Jawanza Malone, Executive Director of the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), and Veronica Morris Moore, who led the campaign through the youth wing of Southside Together Organizing for Power (S.T.O.P.). Morris Moore framed the notion that a trauma center can and should provide services beyond enhanced emergency medical response to trauma. To flesh this out, we heard from a panel featuring UCMC nurse Adriana Sanchez, who lives in the Woodlawn community; Carol Reese, a member of Stroger Hospital’s Healing Hurt People (HHP) program; and Sheila Regan, staff member of CeaseFire Illinois. In response to data indicating that patients admitted to trauma centers as victims of violence are vulnerable to re-injury and return admission, HHP and CeaseFire operate violence prevention programs. HHP focuses on emotional health needs, PTSD, and chaplaincy services, while CeaseFire, staffed by residents of the communities whom they serve, works with trauma victims on alternatives to retaliation and other data-supported methods of violence reduction. HHP already works in UCMC’s Comer juvenile trauma center. The UCMC has not yet initiated any relationship with CeaseFire, which does work in four other trauma centers in Chicago, and which faces new challenges to its work since Governor Rauner cut off its state funding in March.

After the panel, town hall attendees broke into working groups to collect community input. Prominent themes included: the importance of filling staff positions with Black residents of the local neighborhoods; parking affordability; ensuring that the first and most prominent people encountered in the trauma center are social work, mental health, and pastoral professionals, and not security personnel; and that the trauma center partner with organizations like HHP and CeaseFire on a comprehensive approach to trauma reduction – the kind of financial investment which would save the University of Chicago on more costly trauma care down the road.

There were over ninety participants, of all ages, from all the surrounding neighborhoods and elsewhere in the city, and from each coalition partner, including over a dozen JCUA members. University of Chicago had two representatives present: Cristal Thomas, University of Chicago Medicine Vice President for Community Health Engagement and Senior Adviser to the Vice President for Civic Engagement, and Leif Elsmo, Executive Director of the Office of Community & External Affairs. Ms. Thomas and Mr. Elsmo saw an engaged, knowledgeable, diverse, and well-organized community activated by the awareness that this trauma center is an existential, life-and-death issue for the community. They are a community poised to use its collective power to ensure that the U of C acts as a responsible neighbor in its implementation. As a JCUA member and as a Hyde Parker, I was proud to count myself in this community.

As a member of the Trauma Care Coalition, JCUA continues to organize for a community advisory board an significant investment in wraparound social services as part of the University of Chicago’s recent commitment to a Level I Adult Trauma Center. For more information about the campaign, visit our website.

Through March and April, JCUA staff and members are presenting at congregations across Chicago on the Trauma Care Campaign. We are sharing the lessons we’ve learned on putting Jewish social justice values into practice through organizing the Jewish community. On Friday, March 11, JCUA Community Organizer Daniel Kaplan and Member Avra Shapiro made this presentation at KAM Isaiah Israel in Hyde Park.

Shabbat Shalom!

Why are we talking about the trauma center campaign tonight? Since 2010, black youth in the Woodlawn community have led a campaign for the University of Chicago to remedy the decades-long absence of a trauma center on the South Side. These organizations include Fearless Leading by the Youth, Southside Together Organizing for Power, and Kenwood Oakland Community Organization. Too many people in this area have lost their lives in ambulance rides, bypassing the University of Chicago for distant trauma care. In particular, the lack of south side trauma care has impacted the security and quality of life of black south side Chicagoans.

Over the past year, the Jewish community has played a significant role in this campaign; and your congregation in particular has been instrumental in our involvement. In November 2015, more than 200 people from across Chicago came to your synagogue to attend “L’Chaim” – a Jewish community meeting in support of trauma care on the south side. Click below to see highlights from “L’Chaim”.

On this day, 15 rabbis and cantors signed a statement in favor of the University of Chicago taking a lead role in opening a south side trauma center. L’Chaim was a tremendous moment for Chicago’s Jewish community. Our public meeting for the trauma center campaign was an unprecedented show of support for a local social justice issue. A little more than a month after this event, the University of Chicago announced that they would build a trauma center on the South Side. We think it’s important to reflect on what this campaign has accomplished, what we have learned, and where we are now. Read the rest of this entry »

I first learned of JCUA after a chance meeting at the Bucktown Arts Festival. My family and I had recently moved to Chicago, and I was looking for a way to live my Judaism that connected with my values and the values I want to impart to my children. Judy Levey and I soon met for lunch and we explored common professional interests in community redevelopment, urban planning, and urban policy. Judy suggested that I meet with some of the Community Ventures Program advisory committee members and attend a meeting.

I was immediately drawn to a familiar blend of mission-driven professionalism – this was a group that wanted to implement best practices of community development lending while seeking to create positive social change through their investments. With a background in education, non-profit real estate development, and urban planning, I felt like I could contribute to the mission, and be challenged on my practices. Additionally, I could do this in a Jewish context! This was novel and spoke to what I previously thought were disparate components of my identity.

On the CVP board, I’m encouraged to bring new ideas to the table- the types of community development projects we consider, new ways to measure our impact, and more ways to create linkages between CVP’s investments and JCUA’s member campaigns and trademark programs.

Recently we approved a loan for an affordable housing development for seniors in Rogers Park, and we are nearing approval of a small business loan for tenant-initiated custodial and contracting business that will work on an affordable housing preservation project. We have started a preliminary review of a community center that would bring trauma counseling for youth, after school options, and wellness programming, emerging from JCUA’s work on the trauma center campaign!

I am inspired by JCUA this year – our new member initiatives and campaigns, the growth of our teen social justice program (Or Tzedek), and the expansion of CVP’s loan program and recipients. JCUA staff have their fingers on the pulse of social justice activism in Chicago, JCUA’s board members have amazing narrative arcs on the social justice history of Jewish Chicago, and our members continue to grow in number, innovation, and contribution. Mostly, I am excited to know that I am a part of an organization where Tikkun Olam is the priority, in a way that builds deeper understanding and lays the foundation for authentic relationships across diverse communities. The barriers to equity and justice in our city are multifaceted and numerous; fortunately, JCUA provides a conduit to eradicate inequity and usher in a more just Chicago.

On the first Sunday of November, I went to shul. It was not Shabbat, nor was it a holiday, but it was a deeply spiritual day, a day that folded itself beautifully into the rhythm of Jewish life just like any other Jewish celebration. JCUA hosted “L’Chaim! A Community Meeting for Trauma Care”, which brought together over 200 people from Chicago’s Jewish community and beyond at Temple KAM Isaiah Israel in Hyde Park. The event marked a major milestone for the trauma center campaign and a new direction of Jewish responsibility for racial and economic justice.

I first began organizing my senior year of college, and as I got deeper into my work, it became apparent that my heart was pointing me in the direction of doing justice work within the spaces from whence I came- Jewish spaces. As a friend and fellow-organizer put it, “I realized it was time to roll up my sleeves and do the hard work within my own community.” Accordingly, when I came to my first JCUA general meeting and understood the unique and strategic role that the Jewish community could play in the trauma center campaign, I knew it was indeed time to get to work.

For the past year, JCUA has been part of a coalition organizing to expand trauma care on the south side in the midst of a “trauma center desert”. The coalition was started five years ago by FLY (Fearless Leading by the Youth) after 18 year old community activist Damian Turner was shot and had to travel 10 miles to the closest trauma center at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Damian died on the way. Appallingly, Damian was shot only three blocks away from the University of Chicago Medical Center, one of the most well resourced hospitals in the nation. This tragedy was the starting point of a campaign to bring comprehensive trauma care to the South Side, and to call upon the University of Chicago to facilitate and sustain a trauma care center. Read the rest of this entry »